Doll Camp: Doll Eyes

They said they are ‘Doll Eyes’, not god’s eyes—

“That name is for humans”. 

(MT’s doll Margaret Helen is on the far right.)

I liked making these—super simple—I hadn’t made one since art class in … fourth grade. I’d like to try different threads—and maybe more elaborate shapes—for the coming winter holidays,  maybe. 

I looked them up—they can get reeeeeally elaborate!

https://makezine.com/article/craft/these-arent-gods-eyes-you-made-at-summer-camp/

"Different kinds of unnowen"

Somebody donated to the thrift store a postage stamp collection from a 1980s childhood, with envelopes labeled by country---
and Different kinds of unnowen [unknown]:

I priced the box $28, and as I was carrying it to the display case, someone bought it right out of my hands.
 _________________

Perfect Dog Days

I went to see the new Superman with L & M last night. 
I'm generally tired of superhero movies and haven't seen one in years, but I'd heard good things about this one.
And I loved it! 
Superman: Triumph of the Dork. 

Favorite movie moment: Lex Luthor's tennis-ball sized dronebots are defeating Superman... until he says to the flying Superdog,

"Krypto! Get the toy!"

...in exactly the up tone of voice you do say such a thing to a dog.
It's like the scene in Up when fierce Rottweillers are menacing the heroes, and one calls out to the dogs, "Squirrel!"
All the dogs become dopey doodles, looking for the squirrel. 

Also, as a pet-sitter, I related to how Superman feels the weight of responsibility of caring for someone else's pet. (Krypto is his cousin's.)

Superman (David Corenswet) and Krypto were charming, but my favorite character was, above left, the supersmart Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi). Sort of a snarky Mr. Spock.
To Lois Lane, he says,
"I'm not interested in your human emotions". 

And Nicholas Hoult, right, as Luthor was terrific. Elon Musk & Trump rolled into one (with a touch of Epstein?). 
He admits he hates Superman because he's envious. But, nice touch, he's also kind of in love with him.
 "Tall, dark and Martian is not my type," he sneers, leading you to suspect it is exactly his type.

It's easy for we who are alive now to line up the events of Superman with current affairs–– because we're in the middle of them. 
It'll stand alone in the future too—it reminds me of reading The Master & Margarita and knowing that I was missing so many codes that would have been perfectly clear to the readers of the time. 
The whole movie could be studied in fifty years as a coded commentary on our political landscape. 

Russia & Ukraine; Gitmo and other offshore prisons;
climate disaster (in the movie, Luthor's meddling with the environment means creating a cosmic rip)–– 
and our own piddling inaction.
While his cohorts bicker about the name of their group, the Justice Gang?, Mister Terrific says, 

"We’re here to stop dimensional collapse. 
But sure, let’s workshop the logo.”

Reminds me of comic Marc Maron on our self-satisfaction as the climate collapses:

 "We did everything we could. 
We....we brought our own bags to the supermarket. And the drinking straws thing." 

______________

Krypto was CGI-genertated (a real dog named Jolene stood in on set), but after the movie, bink & Maura and I were exclaiming how realistic the relationship between man and dog was. 
Whoever crafted that knows how it goes. 

This morning I looked it up, and director James Gunn said that...

"Krypto was influenced by his adopted dog Ozu, who was abandoned in a backyard and had no human contact. 
Ozu destroyed Gunn’s home, his shoes, furniture, and laptop. 
When he was writing Superman, he contemplated what if Ozu had superpowers, and that shaped his characterization of Krypto. Who wouldn’t laugh at a dog with superpowers chewing up the Fortress of Solitude?"
[via]

His dog is named Ozu! 
Surely after Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, right?
 
That reminds me, I recently watched the DVD of Perfect Days (2023) about a Japanese man who cleans Tokyo Toilets (17 artist/architect designed public toilets). 
Director Wim Wenders said he was most inspired as a young movie maker by Ozu.
{––Via Criterion}

Having enjoyed working as a janitor myself, I related to the story of a man, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), who chooses this simple work/life. (It is not explicit, but Wenders says he imagines the character was a successful businessman who broke his life.)

After work, Hirayama, single man, reads in bed in his little apartment until he falls asleep. His bed is on the floor, of course.
 Just like me!
I can't think of another such scene from my life in a movie. 

The character's room--mostly plants and books–inspired me to declutter my place a little.
I want some tatami floor mats too, but they're a couple hundred dollars. I hadn't realized they are not hard, flat rush mats--they're slightly cushioned (with rice straw, traditionally).
Even better.

I liked Perfect Days, especially the first half when nothing happens. We just follow Hirayami on his daily rounds. 
But the second half becomes too obvious, "as told to the children". 
I felt the director did not have the courage of his conviction, and had to make sure we knew what he was getting at.
And the music score is way too narrative.

So I'd recommend it, but I  wouldn't say I totally loved it.
Three out of four stars.

I give Superman 4/4  stars for its genre. It has no pretense to be anything but an entertainment, and yet it's more. 
Of course Superman also preaches the sweetness of being good-natured (with good glutes!), but we are the choir who has heard it all before.

Even its music is a touch unexpected: 
"Punkrocker," by the Teddybears with Iggy Pop.
 

Oh yeah, and another reporter complains that Clark Kent eschews adverbs. So cinnamon roll, so pure— – what’s not to love?______________

As for the dog days of summer... 
We haven't had it too bad this year so far. Lots of rain, so everything is plushy green, and daytime temps haven't risen above 90º F (32ºC) very often. 

Unfortunately every time it cools off, that sucks in Canadian air, which means smoke from wildfires. Today it's a pleasant 78, but the air quality is a high 120: "unhealthy for sensitive groups".
That is, people with lungs.
________________________

I'm blogging this morning on my laptop at the café in the atrium of a fancy hotel downtown. 
As always, I marvel at how well– dressed and coiffed everyone is here. It's a treat to see that the kombucha and bobba tea (paper straws! compostable cups!) crowd is flourishing.

Honestly, I find this a comforting illusion to be around once in a while, even as I judge it as entirely artificial and morally indefensible.

LOL. It's the world we live in.
Look, circled in red--the hotel shares its high-tech building with a Wealth Management firm.

But it's just such a nice respite, I wish it were sustainable and fair.
My workplace is so dirty, we all wear pretty grungy clothes, and often the customers do too. Sometimes a customer's body odor will almost gag me. 
(Mostly though, they come trailing clouds of weed.)
I can guarantee that NO ONE here in the café has any body odor. Well, maybe they smell of expensive "hair product".

Whatcha gonna do?
I am enjoying a break from grunge and my own illusion of moral superiority with oat milk latte in a ceramic mug.
A moral corrective!

 I don't really think I'm morally superior---
except, of course, don't we all, secretly? 
It's such a boring state of mind.
One of those bread crumbs sticking to the wooly sweater of my self that I'd love to brush off.
_______________

Some of my work yesterday.

Sometimes I love my job so, so much.
Often in fact.
Very happy making: I put electrical tape on this statue and a warning sign, "Peek at Your Own Risk!"
The upside down wrestler’s hand is grasping the other guy's penis. Priced to move at $4.99, it sold right away. I wish I'd seen who bought it.
(I didn't want Big Boss to see it because he might say I had to remove it so nobody gives us a bad google review. Really!
Big Boss is the fly in my love ointment, 
the karmic pebble in my shoe. 
Probably the Divine Mother sent him for my own good.
UGH!)

Remember TANG? A customer said it was "scientific Kool-Aid".
I put the Tang pitcher with a map of Space Travel from 1966.

I almost bought these cuties, but honestly, I have more than enough toys. 

Okay, that's it for today. 
I am liking blogging again, after detoxing from my own reactions to the blogosphere. A couple folkx have emailed that they are liking it too--thanks for saying!

To come: Doll Camp Report.
This afternoon the Girlettes and I are going to MT's place to make yarn gods eyes.

Doll Camp: "The Raft of the Medusa"

 Penny Cooper wants everyone to know:
"Don't be upset, it's ONLY PRETEND."

Also, it could never happen because, as you can see from her Red Cross pin, she is an Intermediate Swimmer! 
And will be going for her Lifesaving badge too.

So, here is their first rendition of "The Raft of the Medusa". (Original follows.)

 The most coveted role was the one with the falling down socks. My favorite touch is the birdbath (a ceramic pie tin) for the ocean.

BELOW: "The Raft of the Medusa", by Théodore Géricault (1818, France)-- more info at The Louvre. (It's quite big--the people are near lifesize.)

I'm not sure we'll do another version. Our raft is too small, and I think this rendition is actually pretty great. (Though the grass bugs me—I should have put down a blanket.)
_______________________

Making a raft was the first project of their summer Doll Camp 2025, way back in early June--but I wasn't blogging so I never posted it!

(Penny Cooper says the blog is important:
 "It's where you show what we do".
That's true enough.)

They assembled the raft...

...but the final steps were human-sized. I tied off the sticks (at some event I attended at the lake but wasn't interested in):

(Comments off, email welcome.)

Valuable Paper File

Some catch-up photos... 
One particular donor has been decluttering all summer and giving us the Most Excellent vintage thrift.

            VALUABLE PAPER FILE
                       for home and office

______________________

BELOW: My display in BOOK's:

Do-it-Yourself 
PROUSTIAN MOMENT!
Madeleine tins! Wow!

The tins sold the next day. 
Maybe some baker happened to want madeleine tins? But in the past they have not sold from the Baking Aisle...

 

 

Finally! Besty-Tacy books with the original illustrations by Lois Lenski! I wish they were hardcover with dust jackets, but even the Harper paperbacks from 1979 are rare donations. 
THEY ARE FOR ME.
(Also, I pinned a Thing (2) to my apron--chaos agent from the Cat and the Hat, you know.)

Maud Hart Lovelace's girls are like Girlettes--rolling on with Being, without the brakes of self-judgment.
 In a few years, if they were humans  that would be gone, but they never age--the girlettes or the early Betsy-Tacy. (I don't read the later books when they're older.)

Debating Wagner, book below. Tangled up in blue.

Birds mingling with composers. The busts have been around for weeks---will they sell now?

That green glaze juice-squeezer set ^ has also been around for weeks. ($15) Made in Japan, 1950s-60s. I'm amazed it hasn't sold. 

More birds.  
Brn Birds on Wire 30¢ listening to St Francis preach.

"We like him, but we know all that stuff. 
Does he have any bread crumbs in his robes?"

I do believe Linda Sue sent me this diptych frame. A prayer was pasted on the right side, but the birds didn't like it. B-O-R-I-N-G. words, words, words

Doing Nothing.

I'm pretty well this summer. I'd gotten off all social media six months ago, after seeing those 'net moguls on Trump's inauguration platform woke me up: 
This is not playing with in the garage anymore! 
This is world domination.

After that, and then stopping blogging a couple months ago, I had a lot of free time! 
What I should do?

And it came to me--(was it Penny Cooper who said it?),
Why don't you try DOING NOTHING?

 

So I have been doing that.
Close to nothing, anyway. Sitting with my amber prayer beads with my coffee in the mornings. Trying to count to ten breaths without interrupting myself. Very amusingly bad at it. 

Then, being human, my brain wanted to investigate Nothing.
 I've been reading and listening to things about/from Hinduism--mostly American-style, like Ram Dass. "Be here now," from my childhood!

And Christopher Isherwood's 1980s memoir of his 40-some years as a disciple of an Indian guru in California: My Guru and His Disciple.

Very comforting to me that after decades meditating, Isherwood doesn't seem less self-obsessed. (Though, what would he have been like without it?) 
And that's not the point.
Doing Nothing, dropping the self, is NOT A SELF-IMPROVEMENT PROJECT.
And yet, it sort of is?
More of a Self-LIBERATION project:
 Drop bits of yourself like bread crumbs for the birds.

It's a slippery one too--the harder you grasp, the more it eludes you.
Very appealing to this Pisces.
Frankie says, RELAX.

I have been liking Ravi Shankar's Morning Raga: Lots of nothing happens. And then... the sun!

Anyway, a friend said she missed my blog and I thought, maybe I do too.
Let's see how it feels...
If I leave comments off, I won't get so entangled in judgment (my own!).

__________________

I've been more friendly with food this year, after dropping added-sugar last Halloween.
Sort of trying to release myself there, too. I think this is all to do with AGING. Release, release--turn into a helium balloon...

When I was young, being fat was my friend!
I didn't exactly see it that way--but I did suspect that it kept me safe, out of the eye of sex, where I didn't want to be.
It worked! 
But at a cost, that as I age becomes more evident:
 the physical weight of weight.

Can I lighten up?
In every way?

Maybe, a little anyway. 

Below, left: On Camino, 2011. Fourteen years later, right, this summer I am finally the same weight again. After years of enjoying the ice-cream and beer diet! That was great, but oddly, I don't miss it. Or, not much.

I do feel better, lighter, but no Camino this summer--my knee is still healing--and every time it gets better I think, I can bike now! 
And that always sets it back. 
So: no biking or hiking until fall.

I am taking the bus instead, and sort of enjoying it:
I envision cartoon rays of light coming off all the other bus riders.
The bus to the thrift store is often a little village of people staying out of the heat in the a/c, napping, doing business in the back... (I bought some ankle socks the other day.) I am sometimes the only white person. (Notable here in Scandinavian-settled territory: 

who has money; who has cars?)

Still setting up side-by-sides.

And the Toy Bridge has expanded to another ledge too.
I've been putting cool pictures in little empty frames.

 

Comments are off, email is welcome. 

 

“Stop trying to tidy yourself up”

Some of my end-cap displays at work:

I’m really enjoying Christopher Isherwood’s “My Guru and his disciple” – – his memoir of living monastically with a Hindu swami. This entry from December 31, 1944, made me laugh in happy recognition.

Snap out of it!

 “Everything, including your scruples about your conduct, is vanity, in the last analysis. Never mind what other people think of you. Never mind what you think of yourself. Stop trying to tidy yourself up. Stop making vows – –you’ll  only break them. No more tears, I beg. Come on, Saint Augustine – – amuse us. And let’s make this a happy new year.”

————

BELOW: Lucinda is entirely redoing their upstairs bathroom, after a pipe broke – – with help from their neighbor Christopher:

Me and sister at the Stillwater Carnegie library

Independence Day: Completely Unprepared

ABOVE: They are singing independence day songs they wrote themselves. (I can’t quite make out the words. It may have something to do with getting Popsicles out of the freezer by yourself? Or maybe it’s nothing like that at all.)

Penny Cooper’s RedCross badge shows she has achieved intermediate swimmer status!ABOVE: I read this quote last night that reminds me of my temptation for GLP-1 drugs that silence food “noise” as they are calling it. It’s in a memoir by Christopher Isherwood – – he’s talking about his Hindu guru, who told him that being released from desire would mean missing “all the fun of the struggle”. 

(Not always so “fun” – – and I certainly think people like Maura’s brother who are chronically, morbidly obese are smart to take Ozempic.)

 I read a thing about rats in labs – – they are bored! And so they are more susceptible to fighting and to addiction. 

They did this experiment where they gave a bunch of rats a playground – – all the things rats like to do – – and these rats were healthier and friendlier! 

I think we are, as a book title says, literally “amusing ourselves to death“ – – because we are bored and we are not spiritually struggling— that’s where the fun comes in! 

It is fun to be in the playground of our own lives.

BELOW: cover of a book about a Buddhist take on the Jewish holy days, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared. Always applies, but with a special emphasis for me (us) after Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed this week.

BELOW: I set up a 4th of July end cap at work …

… and pinned a Thing 2 to my work apron. It’s a tilt-a-whirl world.

Test, test...

I’ve hidden this blog for now.

I've forgotten who said this, but I relate:
I'm always talking about God, "but I don't believe in God."

 

Playing, potentially

More messing around with little toys. The best little toy is tiny golden safety pins – – they exist in a state of latency. Like us, as children – – or, us now, to the extent  we hold onto that state.

Marz brought me that split pencil from Duluth. She has completed her first year in college there, which is quite something! 

"Fresca!"

 I made a mention in Zippy!  comicskingdom.com/zippy-the-pinhead/2025-05-18
Or, my nickname did. (Thanks Michael, for the alert.)

The first person to call me Fresca was an editorial coworker, Jeff Z, in 2003.

Here I am on Camino, 2011--at a tea stop with Ganesh (above me) on the side of the path:

No big walks for me this summer:
I keep reinjuring my knee at work. I've finally started wearing a knee brace there to REMIND MYSELF to be careful.

Not blogging much this month, I've been making more toy assemblages. Yesterday, this saint-on-a-spring, Saint Wobble, the switchboard operator who can connect you to anyone in the spirit world.

Made from a saint statue from work; a phone from Gregg; and a broken piano part from the alley.

Time to catch the bus to work!

Comments off, email welcome.

Italian Song: Jimmy Roselli & Mina

The media volunteer, Jeff, set a pile of LPs on my work table. "Someone donated Italian records. Maybe you know some."

Italian-American, he meant. I doubted it. My father wanted nothing to do with his family background.

I flipped through their soft and dusty covers, and--Jimmy Roselli?
I do know him!
My parents had his album Best of Neopolitan Song. They must have played it a lot, I instantly recognized his voice on youTube.
Why him? We never listened to Frank or Dino or Tony, or Connie.
There's no one left to answer that question.

Roselli grew up in Hoboken, NJ, down the street from Frank Sinatra.
He was never as famous as Sinatra, but "every Italian family in Brooklyn played his records", according to youtube.
Martin Scorsese, (who grew up in lower Manhattan's Little Italy) put Roselli's "Mala Femmina" in his movie Mean Streets (1973).

Here, Roselli sings "Mala Femmina" on the Ed Sullivan Show, 1960.

While I was on the track, I wondered, What was that Italian song played  over and over on the newest Ripley (Netflix 2024) ?

Found it: "Il cielo in una stanza", a 1960 hit in Italy sung by pop star Mina.
(Scorsese also used it too--in Goodfellas. I've never seen it. I learn from youTube comments.)

This is the scene in Ripley:
https://youtu.be/0MiQSrFEkjk?si=HsS08r2-CFLbDcYq&t=22

Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) and Dickie Greenleaf in Naples watch Mina sing "Il cielo in una stanza"  (Mina played by Italian actor Hildegard de Stefano):

Ripley doesn't care for anyone, personally, but he does respond aesthetically. There's nothing funny in the story--(the emotional flatness is a problem in an 8-part series)-- but I did laugh at the faces Ripley makes when he edits a manuscript by Dickie's girlfriend, Marge. Grimacing as he pencils over her writing is one of Ripley's few honest expressions.
A glisten in his eye watching Mina sing is another.

Below:
Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) and Tom Ripley, from American Cinematographer magazine.
Shot in black and white, the series is beautiful. Too beautiful. Everything, every thing is gorgeous. Too much design, and no dirt. Italy was never this clean.

 
Like Ripley's emotions, the visual affect is flat. I did enjoy the series, but without contrasts, it's a little boring.
Nobody wears dirty old undershirts like in Fellini's Roma (1972).

via

 

[comments off. email welcome.]